Economist Jonathan Gruber speaks at a conference of the Workers Compensation Research Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, March 12, 2014. Dr. Gruber is a professor at MIT and the architect of the healthcare reform laws in Massachusetts and the American Affordable Care Act. REUTERS/Dominick Reuter (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS HEADSHOT) - RTR3GTJA

“{T]here are no cost controls in these proposals,” Gruber said in a policy brief. “Because this bill’s about coverage. Which is good! Why should we hold 48 million uninsured people hostage to the fact that we don’t yet know how to control costs in a politically acceptable way? Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control.”

Gruber was straightforward during the Clinton administration when talking about “Hillarycare,” a failed health-care reform bill that rose from the same Democratic Party circles that later gave us Obamacare.

“The honest truth is, I think we haven’t quite figured out what caused health care costs to go up so much over the last thirty years. I don’t think we’ve really found the magic bullet to drag them down,” Gruber told Congress as a member of a group called the Alliance for Health Reform. “So I think on the other side you’re bringing in 37 million people who didn’t have health insurance before, so that drives health care costs up.”

More than 15 years later, Gruber still hadn’t figured out how to control costs.

“So what’s different this time? Why are we closer than we’ve ever been before? Because there are no cost controls in these proposals,” Gruber said in a lecture transcribed in a 2009 policy brief. “Because this bill’s about coverage. Which is good! Why should we hold 48 million uninsured people hostage to the fact that we don’t yet know how to control costs in a politically acceptable way? Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control.”